DMA1.org

Dynamic Languages SIG: Focusing on the Flow with Dot / GraphViz

For April, Evelyn Boettcher brings us an excellent talk previously seen at Dayton Data Visualization:

"dot" draws directed graphs as hierarchies. It runs as a command line program, web visualization service, or with a compatible graphical interface.Its features include well-tuned layout algorithms for placing nodes and edgesplines, edge labels, “record” shapes with “ports” for drawing data structures;and cluster layouts (cite: www.graphviz.org/pdf/dotguide.pdf). Because "dot" takes care of the layout, you are free to focus on how objects are related to each other. Graphs are simply written as a human readable text file: digraph mydotgraph {main -> parse -> execute;}. This talk will give you the tools to start making your own graphs either organizations charts, software flow diagrams, or work flows using dot.

The Dayton Dynamic Languages SIG discusses languages like Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, Javascript, and so forth, plus the techniques and technologies common to them all.

Last month’s broad survey of database technologies notwithstanding,
relational databases really are often the best tool for the job.
But the chances are you could be using them better if you knew
them, and that SQL that they understand, a little better. What
are the most useful aspects of relational databases for a general
programmer to understand?

As always, we’ll take some time for your general thoughts, questions, and ideas.
See you there!

You may think “MySQL” or “PostgreSQL” when you think “database”,
but the truth is that those relational databases are only one
class of the huge array of technologies that can be used to
store and retrieve data. Each class of database has its own
benefits, drawbacks, and problems it’s best suited for. We’ll
review the most important ones as well as some interesting
variants.

Key:value stores

Document databases

Relational databases

Graph databases

As always, we’ll take some time for your general thoughts, questions, and ideas. See you there!

CRUD stands for Create, Remove, Update, and Delete – the four basic
operations applied to database objects – and it’s often used to
describe forms used to manipulate a database. Many web applications
amount to interfaces to let users see and change data this way.

A good web app can be a lot of work, but what if we’re lazy?
What’s the easiest way we can get a basic webform up that
interacts with a database? Let’s find out.

As always, we’ll take some time for your general thoughts, questions, and ideas.
See you there!